


Justified

by eadunne2



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Anger, Angst, Arguing, Bottom Steve Rogers, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Oral Sex, Passive-aggression, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Power Dynamics, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Rimming, Sappy, Shameless Smut, Short, Smut, Swearing, Sweet, Top Bucky Barnes, ish, switch behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:26:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8875867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eadunne2/pseuds/eadunne2
Summary: Steve is fucking pissed. Most people don't know what a petty dickbag he can be. They see Cap, beautiful specimen, singing and dancing and saving the day, and they know nothing about the skinny little shit that can really hold a damn grudge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was in my brain.  
> Have some.
> 
> <3

Steve is fucking pissed. 

Most people don't know what a petty dickbag he can be. They see Cap, beautiful specimen, singing and dancing and saving the day, and they know nothing about the skinny little shit that can really hold a damn grudge. 

Buck had expected it, honestly, when he told the Wakandas to leave him as long as it took to find something to make him right. Not that Steve needed to know any of that - no use in getting the kid’s hopes up if it didn't work. 

But it had. Turns out alien tech is good for something, and Bucky’s head is good as new, which is to say he’s still dumb as a rock and busted to hell, but at least he won’t go batshit crazy at the drop of a word. 

When he knocks on the door of Steve’s apartment, he’s expecting some hollering, a solid dressing down, maybe even that stupendous right hook Stevie’s perfected over the past century. 

The door opens with a scrape to Steve in sweats, rubbing his eyes, hair a goddamn mess at two in the afternoon, beautiful as ever.

“Heya, Stevie,” Buck offers with a rueful smile. 

Steve’s eyes go big and round, and it’d be funny if he didn't slam the door in Bucky’s face.

Buck stands there in the silence, staring bewildered at the door for a solid sixty seconds before he calls, “Steve?”

“Fuck off, James.” 

James. Bucky’s chest collapses.

Steve doesn’t call him that, not ever. Natasha and his mother, but even the guys at the docks or the infantry that didn’t know him so well called him Jimmy. Bucky was a name for the privileged few and Steve always had it on the tip of his tongue like it was nothing, like he owned it and the man it belonged to. 

He wasn’t wrong. 

But 'James'...christ. Bucky’s not sure he’s ever seen Steve this pissed. Without thought or hope he turns around and clunks back down the flight of steps until the reaches the pavement in front of the building. There’s a ‘For Rent’ sign on the garden view door. 

He’s moved in by that evening - he’s only got a backpack of belongings, and it never hurts to pay three months rent in one go. Besides, the landlady is old as dirt, but she seems like a peach.

He’s got nothing and needs nothing except the man pacing canyons into the creaky wood floor that is Bucky’s ceiling, and Buck just lays on the carpet of the floor with a shirt balled beneath his head, watching the path of the footsteps. 

\--

Sleep comes fitfully, but that’s nothing new. The pacing stops at six a.m., walks itself right out the door slamming shut, trots down the steps past Bucky’s window, and down the sidewalk, heading north. Buck follows for almost two miles before Sam cuts him off, yanking him into a coffee shop.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he mutters, dragging Buck into line.

Startled, Buck grumbles. “How’d you find me?”

“Rogers just tried to quit his job and move to Singapore. Whenever he starts acting like a human instead of a cyborg it usually has something to do with you.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Is he ok?”

“Was he ever?”

“Fair point.”

“What’s he up to these days?”

“He works with me, now, at the VA. Does some special ops training at the base. Hand to hand mostly. Always been good with that stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you want?” Sam gestures to the menu behind the nervous looking barista, and Buck tries his best to look less terrifying. A haircut would probably help. 

“Coffee. Black. I can p-”

“Put your fuckin’ wallet away, Terminator. Two coffees, black, and two blueberry muffins.”

“I don’t need a -”

“Sure you don’t,” Sam throws incredulously over his shoulder, then adds, “They’re both for me.”

The kid rings them up and practically throws the muffins over the counter. Sam swallows the first one whole as they stand to one side waiting for their coffee. 

“You need a job?”

Buck shoves his hands in his pockets. “Guess I do."

“You better stay the fuck away from him until he’s ready to deal with you.”

“You know I’m not gonna do that, Wilson.” 

Sam shrugs. “You’re both stubborn pricks. You belong together.”

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

Buck sighs, strangely settled. He’s always liked Sam, though historically that affection’s been accompanied by jealousy. Now it’s gratitude, that someone will just let him pick up and try again, no questions asked, no favors. 

“How do you feel about teaching?”

\--

He hasn’t stopped running his hand through his hair all morning. It’s shorn short again, like when he was a goddamn kid, ready to ship out, eager and dumb. It feels good. Lighter, though he knows that’s not really true. 

“I can’t teach, Sam,” he’d said. “I don’t know the first thing about…”

Sam, per usual, had not listened, and Bucky finds himself standing in front of a handful of fresh faced cadets. It’s like looking in a mirror. Through a time machine. 

“Um,” he says. 

“What happened to your arm?” one guy asks, and the girl next to him elbows him in the gut hissing something about manners, but Bucky gets it. You want to know how bad it can get, want someone to reassure you the world won’t end. The reality is that there is no preparation for war, it’s hell on earth, damnation that’d make Prometheus recoil, but he throws the kid a bone anyway.

“I fell off a train during a mission. When I woke up it was gone.”

“Fuck,” another recruit murmurs, and Bucky nods. 

“Exactly. Now let’s get started.”

And just like that, he’s fine. The words come to his lips without effort, the concepts are familiar as breathing, and he pushes through his discomfort because he can see the pulse in their necks, the softness of their bellies. They’re alive and young, and he can see the cost of underpreparedness stretched out before them in a hundred different possible scenarios. It becomes his mission to ensure they’re equipped for every single one.

He goes home that night worn to the bone. 

He falls asleep with his shirt balled up under his head, and the tattoo of Steve’s footprints in his ears.

\--

A week later Bucky’s running early and Steve’s running late and they near-miss collide on the sidewalk. 

“Fuck,” Bucky grunts and Steve stumbles back as if struck. 

“What the - where did you - Do you live here?” He points an accusatory finger down the half flight of stairs to Bucky’s front door.

“I - yeah.” Buck’s not sure what to say, not sure what’ll make it better, not sure what he did in the first place. He came back, even though no one would blame him for staying gone. Lord knows he packed enough living into the years he’s already spent. But he came back, because otherwise - shit - who knows? Steve’s always getting himself into trouble. 

“Why?” Cold. 

Anger simmers in Buck's chest, resentment and hurt. “I need to live somewhere, Steve. Just ‘cause you don’t want shit to do with me don’t mean I’m gonna curl up and die.”

“Really? But you’re so good at that,” Steve spits before taking off at a full run in the direction of the base and Bucky makes an audible sound of anguish.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jenna asks during his second class. 

“Not a goddamn thing. Keep your eyes up. “ 

_Everything. Ain’t been right in decades._

 

\--

There was a time, a century ago, that he was more than pieces assembled. 

Buried in the body of a skinny, mouthy fucker, licking up the knobs of his spine to the base of his neck where he always smelled so goddamn good for some reason (and back then, no one smelled good), listening to that surprisingly low voice choking out aborted versions of his name - 

Bucky remembers what it felt like to be whole. How else would he recognize he's so broken?

\--

Button up. Sweater. Pressed slacks, dress shoes - shined to perfection. Hair parted neatly to one side. Steve looks like sex on legs and Bucky wants to rough him up so badly he has to clench his fists at his sides to prevent it.

Instead he goes with, “You look nice.”

It doesn't work. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.”

Steve huffs. His words are angry but the tone is closer to curious. “You live in my building, you work at my job - you stalking me, Buck?”

Bucky shakes his head, walking away, putting distance between them before Steve can use the closeness to hurt him. “Nah. Just not trying to be any further away.”

“Your hair,” Steve calls, and Bucky stops. “It looks - you look nice, too.”

No amount of wishing will erase the blush from his face, so he doesn’t try, instead focusing his energy on staving off the glow of pleasure in his chest - not to be trusted. 

“What - what do you do? Here?” 

“Handheld weapons course.”

“Is it … going well? So far?” Steve’s verbiage is stilted, forced, and Buck’s torn between appreciating the gesture and mourning the ease they used to operate under.

“Yeah. It’s good to have something to do with all this time. Weird though, walking by Mrs. Getty’s place every day. Hundred years later and that building’s still ugly as sin.”

Steve barks a laugh, beautiful, head thrown back and Buck remembers sinking his teeth into that throat, just as flawless at twice the circumference it once was, and just as delicate, too, somehow. Buck manages a weak smile until Steve’s humor fades. “Wait. You remember Mrs. Getty?”

“Sure.” 

“But that was - we must’ve been thirteen years old when she died.”

He shrugs. “I think we were fourteen, but yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t…”

Bucky sidesteps the cluster of people meandering past them through the corridor and Steve mirrors him, so they’re tucked away to one side near the wall. “I told the Wakandas I wanted to be out until they could fix me. And - “

“Ain’t nothing to fix, Buck!” 

Buck, not James, and it feels like a blessing, or maybe last rites. 

“Stevie. We both know that’s not true. What I went through - hell, what we did? Shit, man…” He deposits his fists into his pockets. Control. “I couldn’t be trusted.”

“ _I_ trusted you,” Steve says defensively, but when he repeats it… “I _trusted_ you.”

Well. They’re both into music, know a cadence when they hear one, punctuation for a melody that never quite got going.

\--

“Ok, this has gotten a little ridiculous.”

“Look, man. You’re here to drink beer and lose at cards, not give me shit about my interior decorating.”

“You need some fucking furniture, Barnes. I’m the only person you know who’ll accept stolen milk crates as seating.” Not true, Buck thinks. He learned that trick a long time ago. “But I was talking about you and Rogers.”

“What about 'im?”

“Can’t ignore each other forever.”

“Not trying to. Besides, you told me to leave him alone, remember?”

“You never listen! I didn’t think you’d start now!”

“What do you want from me, Sam?”

He sighs so deep it melts him right off the box and onto the carpet, though he keeps the beer upright. Buck joins him with a flop. 

“Dunno. I guess I thought … you two always choose each other. To the detriment of everything else, to be honest. Hell of a time to start thinking different, now that you’re free.”

\--

Jesus fucking Christ, he misses Steve so goddamn much. 

The sound of Steve’s voice. He’ll still get this little rattle near his voice box when he’s angry, asthma though it’s gone, a relic of humanity even medicine couldn’t erase. The skin of his wrists and ankles is stupidly soft and Buck remembers running his lips and fingertips across that span for hours at a time, sometimes while Steve writhed underneath him, but sometimes while he was sketching, ignoring Bucky completely, but Buck couldn’t be torn away, too focused on that creamy, caramel-speckled skin to think on anything but the taste and texture beneath his tongue. 

Steve always cooked for them, even during the war, and some specialties will always taste like home. Buck remembers a safehouse kitchen somewhere in a Lithuania where he’d found bread and cinnamon and honey and ended up weeping on the floor. When they pulled him out he had a burn on his forearm and peanut butter on his bad hand. He couldn’t remember why it was so fucking important, but that smell of sweet bread crept in and tried to remind him before they wiped it away again. 

Steve came up a lot over those winter years, much to HYDRA's chagrin. Music was a big trigger, bad enough that they eventually equipped him with noise-cancelling earplugs so the sound of Glenn Miller or Billie Holiday wouldn’t send him into an “episode.”

Buck misses the feel of their skin pressed together. Steve runs hot, did even as a runt, and for as thick as Bucky’s always been, he’s never more than a few degrees from shivering. His body got over it, but his mind never quite did, not relaxing completely until he’s sunk into a bath or curled in front of a vent. 

The sound of breathing. The smell of his skin. He misses fifteen year old Steve, and Howling Commandos Steve. Even, serious, quiet, defy-the-whole-world-for-their-friendship Steve. He’d known before he got his brain back that the real Steve smiled a whole lot more than that guy, but even that weary version of him was preferable to this cold apathy. 

\--

Steve’s a good teacher. Bucky creeps into his classes occasionally, sits in the top row and watches him. The cadets watch him with awe and affection in their gaze. Buck’s pretty sure he doesn’t notice.

\--

“Steve, I’m so sorry.”

“Alright.”

His body’s so small that the white shirt puffs and ebbs in weird places around his bones. The old apartment was drafty. Bucky remembers trying to get Steve to take his coat. 

“They gave us overtime for the last two hours.”

“Great.”

“Stevie -”

“I said alright, Buck! Jesus. What do you want?” His clavicles dip in so far, and Bucky always wants to taste that negative space.

“I don’t want you to be mad!” When Steve’s mad the whole world tints greyish yellow. Buck tries harder than anything to do right by him, just sometimes it doesn’t work out. 

Bucky remembers this fight. Steve had made them dinner and Buck came home two hours late, and they’d fought like maniacs until Bucky accidentally blurted that all he’d been thinking about was Steve’s prescriptions, and if Steve couldn’t breathe it didn’t matter how delicious his cooking was, and the ice in Steve’s eyes had melted right along with his knees where he sank to the floor and said, “Thank you,” and “Sorry,” and “I love you,” by sucking Bucky off in the middle of their living room so thoroughly that Bucky ended up collapsed next to him, whimpering apologies until Steve kissed them away with salty lips and gentle fingers through Buck’s hair. 

“Shoulda fucking thought about that three hours ago,” Steve says.

“I’m sorry!”

“You mentioned.”

“Look, Stevie, rent is due next week and we were already -”

In this version of the memory, Steve says, “I don’t wanna hear it, Buck,” and that’s not unrealistic, but it’s not how it happened. “Fuckin’ selfish.”

The words sting, even imagined instead of remembered. “Steve. I needed to make sure you -” 

“What?” he shouts. “Waited up for you?”

“I needed to make sure you got your 'scripts this month!”

“No, you didn’t!”

“Course I did, Stevie! You’re mine to look out for! I had to - Steve?”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” he wheezes, slumping to catch himself on the table, and no, no, this is all wrong, this is not how it happened at all - “This was your last chance, Barnes, and you blew it.”

“What?”

His lips are turning blue, breath coming shorter, and Buck frantically kneels at his feet. “No - Steve -”

The whites of his eyes are turning rosy. 

“Shoulda come home, Buck.”

“I had to keep you safe!” he screams.

“Buck -” Steve chokes.

“No! No, no, no -”

“Buck!”

This time it’s louder, sharper, and Bucky jerks awake so hard he hears his neck crack.

“Steve?”

He’s real, and alive, and breathing smoothly above him in a baggy tee and boxers. 

“Steve.” He falls back with a sigh, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

“The fuck was that?”

“Bad dream,” he grunts, and now he’s awake enough to be embarrassed. He rolls up and pads to the sink, sucking gulps of water from his cupped palms then splashing his face. 

Steve’s looking around. 

There’s a folding table Buck found in the alley along one wall of the kitchen, and the fridge on the other. 

The bathroom door’s open, nothing but a threadbare towel hanging over the handle. The studio floor is bare carpet, with three milk crates stacked to one side stuffed with all six items of clothing Bucky owns, and his notebooks. And the shirt balled up on the floor. 

Buck takes it all in along with him before he realizes - “How’d you get in here?”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “I may have broken your door.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“You were screaming! I’ll fix it tomorrow,” he adds more quietly.

Bucky stares. “I - nah. It’s...it’s ok. I - what was I saying?”

Steve shakes his head like maybe he’s gonna deny it, but ends up muttering, “My name. Just Steve. Over and over. And “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck,” Bucky heaves. “Well. Thanks. For the wake up call. You can - you can go back to sleep. If you want.”

“Why don’t you come up to my place?” falls out of Steve’s mouth like the words are tripping over each other in their haste. “Just … since I broke your door and shit.” Maybe they haven’t changed that much. He sees Bucky ready to protest and intercepts with the play he knows Bucky can’t out maneuver. “Please?

-

“Here,” Steve murmurs, and tosses a couch cushion on the floor. 

“Thank you.”

“Sure. You - want a beer?”

Bucky laughs. “Sure.” It won’t make a difference. They both know it. 

Steve leans on the counter and watches Buck carefully tuckig his notebooks neatly into the backpack he hauled upstairs. “What were you dreaming about?”

“Fight we had,” Buck says to his beer. “I came home late. You made dinner.”

“All that ruckus for a fight?’ Steve jokes dryly.

“You died. In the dream. Or...started to. I couldn’t - “ His throat starts to tighten. He’s surprised by the marshmallow reaction of his insides, that they’ve manages to remain so embarrassingly squishy throughout the years. “Whatever. Didn’t wanna lose you again.”

“Yeah,” Steve says bitterly. “I imagine that must’ve hurt something awful.”

Buck sighs. “Steve. I’m sorry.” Again. “I was trying to keep everyone safe.” 

Reproachful eyes follow him from the kitchen to the couch where he tosses his bag, and then back. Bucky’s finished his whole beer by the time Steve says, “How long are you gonna stay?”

“Here?”

“Brooklyn.”

“I hadn’t thought about it. I’m not planning on going anywhere. Nowhere else to go,” he huffs, the skeleton of humor attempting to support the words. 

“You could go anywhere.”

I don’t want to. “I suppose,” he says instead, weary, then remembers. “You were wearing that shirt - my shirt - in the dream.”

“The white one?”

“Yeah. You always forgot to button the collar.”

“Didn’t forget,” Steve says mischievously. “You were always staring.”

“Couldn’t help it,” Buck protests. “My clothes, those collarbones - shit. It’s a wonder I got anything done.”

Steve laughs and Buck can’t help but join, and it fucking hurts, like a charlie-horse in the sole of your foot, excruciating, and nothing to do but breathe through it. He rinses the beer bottle in the sink, ready to retreat back into unconsciousness when there’s sudden heat at his back. Steve. Behind him. Radiating warmth as he reaches around and dumps his own foamy dregs down the drain and sets the glass into the sink. For a moment, he pauses, arm halfway around Bucky, and they both breathe, frozen, more real to one another than they’ve been in seventy five years and Bucky makes this anguished little noise in his throat.  
Steve jerks away. “Night,” and he disappears into his room. 

\--

The door’s fixed the next evening. Steve smiles, small and private, as he hands Bucky the new key. 

Buck’s apartment is freezing. 

\--

If he thought that night was an olive branch he was sorely mistaken. In fact, Steve avoids Buck pretty spectacularly until Sam recruits them to help with a combat demonstration. They agree without thinking, and in the locker room, debriefing, Sam makes some comment like, “You sure you’re ok with this?” and Bucky just laughs. 

“I can make my own damn decisions, alright Wilson?”

Sam sasses back, “Yeah, the last time we let you do that you went and napped on us for a few years.”

Buck shrugs amiably. “Don’t regret it.”

Steve makes this furious noise in his chest, disbelief and rage, and storms out of the locker room and onto the mat without a word.

He’d expected Steve to feel abandoned, knew that there was no way he’d be able to see a different perspective right away, but Buck thought he’d get over it, be happy to see him, pick up where they left off, but no. He’s just livid, and Bucky’s just… hurt. 

“Steve,” Buck murmurs, joining him out in the gym. “What -?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” he mutters flatly, too focused on the tape with which he’s binding his knuckles to pay any attention to Bucky’s face. 

What is Bucky supposed to say? “Warm up?” He flexes his own hands then steps back to give them room. Steve’s stance is unchanged. Why mess with the classics? 

Steve swings on him, eyes blazing, and Bucky blocks it, clean but jerky beneath the impact. With a feint, he manages to land a hit to Buck’s right shoulder within a minute and it hurts, but not badly. 

“Shit. Not holding back, huh?”

“Have I ever?”

Buck shrugs, acknowledging that truth. 

“Who’s gonna take the knockout?” Sam calls from the adjacent office.

“I can!” Buck shouts back, not taking his eyes off Steve for an instant. 

“Always the martyr, aren’t you?” Steve sneers.

Bucky scoffs, “Says the kid who _threw_ himself into the service, even though everyone fucking begged you not to.”

“That was different!” 

“How?” Buck’s been taking tiny steps towards him, shifting his weight, and knocks Steve across the chin, pissing him off.

“I had a fucking obligation!”

“So did I!”

“We could have protected you.” Every third word is punctuated by a blow, and Buck’s blocking most, but not all. 

“Not good enough, Steve.”

“I know!” he shouts and that gives Bucky pause. Literally. He pauses on the mat.

“What?”

Steve fucking socks him.

Bucky’s lip is split without a doubt, and he tongues it to gauge the severity, bringing his hands back up. Not bad, but bleeding profusely. “What the fuck, man?!”

“I know you won’t stay for me! I know none of this was enough! Why’d you even fucking come back, huh? I don’t want to do this anymore!”

“Do _what_?”

Work? Fight? There’s no reprieve for them now, throwing or blocking with every step.

“Live!”

Shocked, Buck chastises, “Steve!”

“No!” Steve chokes out, and Buck is surprised to hear the pitch of his voice rise. “No, you don’t get to - fuck you Bucky Barnes. You fucking left!”

“I had to!” Steve knocks him back a pace with a well-placed punch to the chest. “What was I supposed to do, Steve?”

“Take me with you!” he roars, and with a series of forceful paces, knocks Bucky clean on his ass and he’s not done, straddling Bucky’s hips to pin him down. “You weren’t supposed to go where i couldn’t follow! How many times have i lost you?” He’s wailing on Buck, and Bucky’s strong enough to take it, but a little too distracted to protect himself effectively.

“You?” Buck snaps. _”You_? I fucking lost you every few days for fifty fucking years you piece of shit!

Steve has the good sense to look a little chagrined at that, but then he delivers the knockout, and Bucky gets it. “They took that from you. You chose to leave!”

Done trying to protect himself, Buck says, “Stevie -” 

“We said end of the line.” He’s crying. 

“I’m sorry, man. I am. But I - Christ, I just needed to rest for a minute.”

Steve snaps, bellowing, “You think I don’t fucking know the feeling?”

Buck recoils. Abandonment, he’d expected. But jealousy?

“Oh,” Bucky says, and this time, when Steve’s shifts to lay him out, Bucky intercepts with an embrace, strong as iron, and flips them.

“I’d rather die than hurt you. Couldn't take that risk.” 

Steve’s struggling against him, tears worming their way down his temples. “Fuck you,” he spits, struggling. “Fucking fuck you, I fucking hate you for leaving -”

“I know,” Buck whispers into his hair. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“You said -”

“I didn't’ want to get your hopes up. If it didn’t work...I needed you to be able to move on.”

“You’re an idiot,” he breathes into Bucky’s neck.

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

“Ok.”

“You even care?”

“Course I care, you fuckin' punk. I need you, Stevie."

\--

Steve locks the apartment door and pulls Bucky to the center of the room where the light’s brighter. He wastes no time stripping the henley from Bucky’s torso. Buck’s got scars and a metal arm and weird bruises, and he’s skinnier than he’s been in years.

“Christ, Buck,” Steve gasps. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful.”

Bucky scoffs and takes his time stripping Steve. Pants first - sweats for fighting, and he goes exquisitely slow, sliding his knuckles down Steve’s hips and thighs until he can step out of the clothing. Shirt next and Bucky latches onto a nipple while Steve’s still stuck in the collar, biting down. “Fuck!”

Eventually they’re naked, standing on the sun-warmed floor, and Buck surges forward, taking Steve’s face between his palms, kissing him as gently as he can.

They deserve some gentleness after all the pain, and Steve’s always loved softness, counterintuitive and perfect for a scrappy, mouthy kid. Buck presses his mouth to Steve’s, chaste and sweet and slow, over and over again until Steve’s hands are scrambling at his hips to pull him closer, deeper, and when a frustrated sound escapes Buck finally acquiesces and opens his mouth. 

Steve’s on him in an instant, tugging him closer in every way he can manage, hands and knees and tongue and Bucky goes willingly. Tension Buck hadn’t realized he’d been heaving along behind him for decades dissolves into dust particles floating on the moats from the windows. Lightness. Perfection. This is where he was always meant to be - the only place he’s ever felt at home. 

Steve’s so fucking beautiful in every iteration, but Bucky hasn’t had much chance to explore this one, so when they can finally separate again, Buck steps back to look. Steve tries to close the space but Bucky stills him with a “Stay,” and he falls back obediently. 

Few people would suspect that Cap is so good at following orders. 

Bucky circles around, taking in every feature - wide rolling shoulders that taper to a slim waist, hips cut from the plane of his stomach. Thighs and forearms and calves and biceps carved in sinew, but when Buck sets his mouth to them everything’s velvet and soft salt and he shudders. “Stevie,” he sighs. “Fuckin’ perfect.” He sets his fingers along Steve’s ribs, watching the twitch of the muscle beneath. “Your skin...christ, you’re so fucking sweet, and those freckles - god. I remember licking over your spine and thinking how fucking lucky I was to get to see what no one else got to. Made me feel like a fucking king. You always do.”

“Buck,” he breathes shakily. 

Metal fingers wind into Steve’s hair and pull sharply to one side so Buck can suck a mark into Steve’s neck. He whimpers but continues to obey, holding as still as he can - stationary, but trembling. 

“Remember being so proud to be yours,” Buck pants, air stolen by emotion long harnessed and suppressed. “Even when no one else knew. Walkin’ next to you - god. Felt like a million bucks, Stevie, ‘cause everyone’d be looking at you, and you were lookin’ at me.” He grips Steve’s hips tightly so there’s no room to move as he nips along broad shoulders.

“Always.”

Bucky hums in approval. “Always wanted you. I remember watching you get dressed for church and thinking about all the goddamn hail mary’s I’d have to do to make up for all those impure thoughts.”

“Fucking Christ,” Steve curses quietly. “You remember all that?” The hope is in his eyes and his voice and Buck doesn’t hesitate to say, “Kid, I remember everything.”

Steve collapses to his knees with those blue eyes opening wide as he turns Buck by the thighs and gasps, “Please -”

Bucky’s cock is plunged down Steve’s throat in one shared movement, a unison shift into one another, and Bucky shouts as Steve groans around him. “God, Stevie, fuck -”

The power balance has been a part of their dynamic, a central tenet they both cling to as a matter of mental and biological necessity. As young men, people always assumed Bucky had the power, burly and diligent. Nobody knew every breath he took, every cent he earned was for the love of that skinny boy he shared a studio apartment with. Buck could haul cargo with the best of them, but he’d drop to his knees like sinner at confession at the very sight of Steve standing naked and dripping from the shower, fisting his cock slowly, blue eyes never leaving the form of the man who was his in every way.

And later, when Buck was a recovering POW and Steve became Captain Fucking America, it was Bucky who took him apart and set him back right when he lost his way, Bucky who’d fuck him hard enough that they both finally got some sleep, Bucky who’d catch him on the way out of the tent in the morning and hold him tight enough that he felt real, remind him who he was, what he was worth, who he belonged to.

Steve’s mouth is perfect, and he works his tongue vigorously, keeping his hands clasped behind his back - showing off, they both know, and Buck loves it, but the sight of those ocean eyes staring up at him is more than Bucky can take for very long,

When he finally snaps it’s less than a minute before Bucky’s manhandled Steve over the side of the bed with a growled command to hold still, then he’s sunk to the floor and pulling Steve’s cheeks apart so he can taste him.

Steve rocks forward, groaning, and Buck chases the movement with his tongue. It doesn’t take long before Steve’s relaxing for him, ass and body, and soon a finger joins his mouth, then two. Lube. Another finger. And then Bucky presses the head of his cock to Steve’s hole and the whole world freezes. 

Steve’s body is held in tense suspension at the feel, and Bucky can’t breathe. It might be too much. He might not make it. “Stevie -” he croaks.

“ _Please_ , Buck.”

Bucky collapses into him. They still there for a moment, Buck blanketing Steve’s back, adjusting to the feel and the reality and Steve grumps, “We could’ve been doing this for weeks,” and Bucky bursts out laughing.

“Yeah, ya stubborn asshole.”

“Hey, you were the asshole.”

Bucky nods to himself, conceding the point, says, “I’ll make it up to you,” and proceeds to do just that. He fucks Steve shallow and slow, biting and licking every available inch of skin, fingers locked with Steve’s over the bed. The more noise Steve makes, the loser his hips, the deeper Buck goes, giving him what he’s begging for.

Steve’s mewling against the comforter when Buck realizes he’s saying something. “Come up here.”

“Gonna have to stop fuckin’ me so good, sweet boy,” he pants and Steve laughs.

“You first.” Bucky’s about to argue but then Steve adds, “Need to ride you.”

Buck’s on the bed in seconds, Steve still chuckling at him as he sinks down. 

“Ah! Stevie. You feel like heaven.”

Steve blushes all the way down to his chest. It’s a sight to behold. 

He leans forward, kissing Buck deeply as he fucks himself until he can’t breathe, only retreating a few inches, canting back with increasing desperation and Bucky feels his skin tightening in anticipation. 

“Buck -” he whispers.

“Yeah, baby.”

‘I need -” It’s a sob.

“I know.”

“Can I?”

“Wait, sweet boy.”

“But -” 

“Trust me.”

Steve nods, eyes wide, and sits up so he can get Buck deeper inside of him. It feels so good for both of them that he leans back on his hand to accentuate the angle and Bucky watches, mesmerized at the sight of such an exquisite human being so completely consumed by pleasure, and when he’s too close to bear it, he wraps a hand around Steve’s cock.

“Buck! Please! I can’t -”

“Now, Steve.”

They’ve fucked hundreds of times in their lives, maybe even into quadruple digits. They’ve perfected their craft. And still. Buck thinks he won’t ever forget this one.

Steve clenches down and Bucky jackknifes up to slam into him, mouths meeting messily as Steve comes and comes, whimpering against Bucky’s lips, over and over, wringing Bucky dry without even trying. Buck swears at a whisper as he comes because he can’t get a decent goddamn breath in his lungs with a fucking vice on his cock. Their faces are both wet, and it’s been so long but it’s perfectly familiar the way Bucky can’t stop touching Steve, and the way Steve responds, preening under the attention until they both fall back against the pillows, too tired to stay upright. 

\--

Neither of them have ever been morning people. 

A hundred years ago, six am looked like Steve making oatmeal with his eyes closed and Bucky burning the shit out of his hand as he boiled water for coffee. They’d collide and snip at each other but Bucky always kissed Steve soundly before he left, on the forehead, mouth, hand, and heart. “The things I love about you,” he’d say, every day, and every day, Steve’d roll his eyes and say, “Get the fuck out, you sap."

Steve wakes on this particular morning to the sound of coffee brewing, and alway, someone tracing his clavicle. 

“Always loved this,” Buck says softly into the morning air.

“Which?” Steve yawns. 

Buck shrugs. “All of it. Morning. You.”

Steve grins at him. “Sap.”

“I’m just telling the truth.”

Something about that shifts the mood, and Steve considers him somberly. “If you leave I swear to god you’ll never find me again.”

“Stevie -”

“Not up for discussion.”

“Ok.”

They examine each other, subjects under a microscope, a century long experiment with promising outcomes. 

Finally Steve admits, “I understand why you did it.”

“I understand why you’re mad.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive you.”

Buck laughs, only slightly bitterly. “Welcome to the club.”

Sighing, Steve adds, “But I want you to stay. Need you to.”

Buck nods, smile creeping across his mouth.

“Will you?”

“Stay?”

“Yeah, Steve." He wriggles up and around so his back is pressed to Steve's front. Strong arms embrace him. "The fuck else am I supposed to stay warm?"

Steve laughs and breathes in deep at the nape of Buck's neck. He exhales, "You always smell so goddamn good. Have forever. Like home."

"Fitting."

"Sap."

"I know you are but what am I?"

"A dick."

"You love my dick."

"And everything attached to it."

"That's the weirdest, sweetest thing you've ever said to me."

Steve shakes his head against the pillow. "Is not. I bet I'll have topped it by lunch time."

Privately, Buck bets he'll have it by breakfast, but the kid's already got just about everything he has to give, so he decides to wait and see.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me at seasless.tumblr.com


End file.
